Sorry if this has been covered before but I didn’t find it.
I did my first system scan today with version 4.6.763 and it took over 11 hours to do a standard scan.I’ve been doing thorough scans for months with the previous builds only taking about 40 minutes.I’ve tried a repair and an uninstall/reinstall.Still no luck.
Any advice from anyone? Thanks in advance.tim
Well something, it seems to me is definitely amiss.
I am using the Home edition of avast and the latest point upgrade.
I run my weekly avast scan of my system by a scheduled ashquick.exe scan of my 9 logical drives spread over 4 physical drives and obeying the exclusion list I have set up.
This is scheduled to run on Friday evening when I am, normally, away from the system enjoying a relaxed end of week dinner at home. I have yet to find anything other than that I return to find the ashquick report that it has scanned x thousand files in y thousand folders totalling ~zGb and found 0 viruses. Periodically I attend the scan of my system just to see what takes a long time to scan etc. The usual duration for this scan is approximately 45 minutes (give or take a few minutes). The last time I watched the scan was a few weeks ago and prior to the latest point upgrade.
In the last few weeks I have made no significant changes to my system but I have upgraded to the latest point release of avast.
Seeing the post by timcan I thought “surely he must be wrong”. So tonight I ran some tests.
I confined the tests to my system drive (C:) the primary partition on my first hard drive.
I first ran an ashquick.exe scan of the C: drive.
Just scanning the C: drive took 44 minutes (compared with my normal 45 minutes for 9 logical drives). It reported some 249,000+ files in 3900+ folders of 7.3Gb.
I then ran the avast on demand scanner for the C: drive. I selected a thorough scan with archive file scanning (to make it a more “apples to apples” comparison with the ashquick scan). It took in excess of 72 minutes to perform the scan and reported 249,000+ files in 3900+ folders at 7.3GB (I was surprised at the closeness of the numbers).
So while I cannot imagine what caused such a lengthy scan for timcan (even though his data was 24.5Gb) it appears to me that avast scans have become slower with the latest point release.
So long for just 24GB of data? I took just few minutes for around 150GB of data (Standard/No Archives). What system do you have? CPU, RAM and disk?
Thanks for replies,RejZoR I have 200 gig HD,everything else is in my sig. Before this update I could do a thorough/with archives around 40 mins.
Gentlemen, what about without archive scanning enabled?
Version 4.6.763 brought some new unpackers – so maybe these are causing the delays?
I’d definitely like to know more about this problem – but frankly, we haven’t seen any increase in duration on our test sets lately…
Thanks
Vlk
Well I haven’t seen any difference in my weekly scan duration Standard, No archives, two HDDs two partitions on each, with very limited exclusions (only about 15 entries in the Last Scan Result screen). This scans just over 5GB of data and takes 7 minutes and has done so for some considerable time 7-7.5 minutes average.
My HDDs are relatively clear of debris, regularly get rid of or archive to CD/DVD unused programs, etc. so small beer compared to many.
Thanks again,I will try without archives later on.
Well I did a thorough scan without archive and time was 24 mins,14.8GB.So I guess these unpackers that Vlk said was added is what slows the scanning down.IMO this is much to drastic change in time of scans.
But if this is the way it has to be then that’s the way it is. :-\
Yes, the delicate balance between performance and protection, we all want better protection and a number of people asked for better packer support. I guess we got our wish ;D
Whilst, I rarely do an on-demand scan with archives enabled, some of the times raise here are painfully slow so some are likely to run them overnight. This could raise another issue if after say an hour a virus is found an awaits user input for action to take. So when the user wakes from their slumbers only to find the scan has stopped before it has really got started, they are likely to be very disappointed.
I know that they could elect for silent mode with general answer NO which would send the virus to the chest and allow the scan to continue without intervention; I personally would rather know what is going on than automatically send something to the chest.
In view of these new enhancements and its effect on scan duration with archives, is it time to re-think the actions on virus found in the Home version?
I find it somehow hard to believe; the unpacking changes done in the last version were not so big. The new “OLE unpacker” may cause new MSI installers to be unpacked… do you have any big MSI files on your disk?
Maybe you can try to turn on the creation of the report file and let “OK files” be included there as well. The resulting report (after you run another scan with the archives turned on) will be HUGE - but maybe it could help you to say where most of the time is spent. It’s just a guess, but I’d say it will be one (or just very few) archive(s).
At the same time as I performed the tests yesterday I did one more that I did not report above.
For the same C: partition I ran the on demand scanner at thorough setting without archives and it compared:
w/o archives 38 min 39000+ files 3900+ folders 5.3Gb
with archives 72 min 249000+ files 3900+ folders 7.3Gb
ashquick 44 min 249000+ files 3900+ folders 7.3Gb
I would still wonder why ashquick ran so much faster than on demand.
ashQuick scan should be identical to the Simple User Interface “thorough” scan with archives. So, even the times should be basically the same… could the difference be caused e.g. by Windows cache? (i.e. if you run 2 scans from within the same Windows session, some files may already be in cache for the second run, i.e. the file access may be faster).
Regarding the increased file count - do you have a significant number of MSI installers on your disk, or maybe a lot of MS Office documents?
Since timcan has avast Professional (I don’t know how about alanrf), he could selectively find out which unpacker is causing this (provided he’s using the Enhanced user interface).
I’d also like to know if it’s the new OLE unpacker, and if so, which file(s) are causing this, exactly.
Thanks
Vlk
I am using the home edition.
Are the new unpackers used by ashquick?
Igor has mentioned .msi files in an earlier post. I have 50 .msi files on the partition I used for my scans. They occupy about 180Mb in total and the 7 largest ranging from 10-17Mb occupy about 90Mb (examples NortonGoback4 , Diskeeper Pro, J2SE Runtime Environment). I have less than 100 MSOffice documents totalling about 3Mb.
Anyway that I can help isolate the issue further with Home edition?
For igor - sorry your cache idea won’t work
I ran the scans in the following order:
ashquick
on demand w/o archives
on demand with archives
Could I simply add the filetypes scanned by the OLE unpacker to the exclusion list and re-run, would that provide anything useful? Or is there a simple way to disable the new unpacker and re-run?
Vlk,what do I need to do(instructions ect) as I usually only use simple user interface.
I’m rather dense at times igor,I don’t know what msi installers are :-[ and no MS Office docs.
Start the Enhanced User Interface, go to Tasks folder, select the default task “Scan: local disks”, rightclick on it and choose “Create copy”. Select the task copy, rightclick on it and choose “Properties”.
Make sure “Advanced configuration” is checked. Now, modify the task properties to mimick the “Thorough scan” from the Simple User Interface. I believe the best match would be:
“Types” page - Scan all files
“Sensitivity” page - Scan whole files, Ignore virus targeting
“Packers” page - all packers checked
Keep the rest on default.
Now, you can uncheck the “OLE archive” (on the “Packers” page) - which is the new one in the latest update - and run the scan to see how long it takes (and how many files are scanned).
There was a new unpacked in the latest update - OLE. The change affects all the scanners, not just ashQuick.
Well, the detection is not based on file extension, but rather content. So, you can exclude the MSI files, but I’m not sure if it affects all the archives.